Curious how Patrick Stewart got a mention here, but Peter Jackson slipped under the radar:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/local/3199875/Peter-Jackson-says-knighthood-a-tribute-to-parents

I prefer not to use adblock extensions, personally. When a site crosses the line and starts getting in my face with talking / content-covering ads... say with close button trick-throughs... I pull up my activity menu in Safari (there are analogs for other browsers, or you can just comb the source code), and I just nuke the offending ad servers in my hosts file.

I've found that only a small percentage of the ad servers out there carry the nasty stuff (I define nasty as making noise without my consent or covering content and forcing a clickthrough) -- so generally just two or three hosts entries can clear you right up.

That's just what they want!

The printer manufacturers are after your precious bodily fluids!

No, I'm using the version 100% legit off of steam, purchased "standard edition" -- not "collector's".

They're making a sales pitch for DLC on launch week via the quest givers in-game... on the day of launch. There's a questgiver in your camp that gives you about 3 minutes of dialog tree before "you don't have enough bioware points" -- and another at a mountain pass.

One unlocks the only decent tank NPC in the game, while the other gives you a party chest and an upgraded base with vendors that alleviate the mana potion scarcity in the base game.

It's really, really, really sleazy.

I've got to say that the two quest givers that I've run into so far who ask for real life money in order to take some of their quests are about the sleaziest thing I've ever seen in a game.

From what I understand, each of the initial DLC packs are fully integrated into the main campaign, with dialog, new characters, character interaction, etc.

That means more than likely that they stripped side quest stuff out of the core game and decided to sell two chunks as DLC, in effect making a $60 game an $85 game.

I'd be more upset if the game itself wasn't huge and really well done for the most part. I'm enjoying the hell out of the game, but DLC available at launch -- with in-game paywalls soils the experience a great deal.

If this was a "finish it in a single sitting" game like Fable that tried to pull DLC this aggressively, I'd be pretty irate.

That doesn't excuse the strategy that they're using, but it does soften it a bit because there's more than enough game there without the add-ons. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a game this long since Baldur's Gate 2.

The lack of co-op is likely due to the fact on tougher battles in the game (at least on the PC version), you'll quite literally need to pause every single round to micromanage your troops to keep them alive. The AI's good, but it's not particularly great at:

1. Not standing in fire
2. Spell interrupts
3. Healing intelligently / pre-healing / mana conservation
4. Positioning for backstabs and staying out of caster cones / dragon breath

Pausing isn't any fun at all in co-op, but I can assure you that the depth of strategy required for the combat system outweighs bolting on a multiplayer aspect for this particular title. It has the most punishing/unforgiving combat design I've seen in an RPG in many years... and I like it that way.

When I came across my first "real" dragon in the game (near some plot-related ashes), I must have reloaded that battle from scratch for around 4 hours before I beat it, pausing every 1/2 second each battle. That's no fun at all multiplayer.

Going to have to politely disagree here. Appliances such as coffee makers, toasters and electric kettles most certainly benefit from 220.

There's a reason you don't see many electric kettles in the U.S... they take longer than the stove to almost boil a pot of water, compared to the 20 seconds or so you get in the UK for a rolling boil.

I also quite like the switches on UK outlets, although the size of the sockets is somewhat ridiculous.

I'll never forget my first trip to London (about 15 years ago)... the flat I stayed in was in a 150 year old building. Switches on all the outlets, and a central touchscreen that controlled the AC, heat and scheduled the water heater to kick on and off. Hot water in the kitchen sink was on-demand (much like the "electric showers" you see in small flats now).

At the time, it was absolute magic to my teenage American brain, and I began wondering why we don't do more in the U.S. to curtail wasted power.

Then there was the ubiquitous gas broiler on every stove I came across...

But the combo washer-dryer deals that take 5 hours for a load suck. And they're generally in the kitchen for some reason.

I'll come out and suggest the same codebase and be shocked if it wasn't a straight up PC-EFI 9 or the latest Chameleon + EFI combo. All Pystar has done is slap their own branding on existing OSX86 tools since the beginning.

They're more than kinda shady and I feel really sorry for folks who bought one of their insta-hackintoshes and didn't have the technical know-how to compile drivers / hack efi strings etc to keep their "Mac" running properly.

Moral of the story: if you're gonna do it, build one yourself so you can learn how to support your own build.

Pystar's gonna get sued into oblivion soon, and good riddance.

Gotta love MS, always two steps behind when they crib their strategy from elsewhere (in this case the big box stores that love overpriced accessories).

Marking the hell out of cheap commodity accessories stopped being a viable business model a few years ago.

Here's hoping that extended warranty scams and increased online competition force some sense into the big boxes at some point, but the writing's on the wall.

Amazon's already trialing same-day shipping in major markets. Other etailers won't be far behind.

Yeah, we were the same way. No rules lawyering at the table, 30 sec max for lookups then best judgement. Keep everything rolling so the laughs and momentum didn't start to lag.

Funny you mentioned Tunnels & Trolls. I'm still using the old grievous injury chart from that set just to spice stuff up and give the folks a little acting fodder for their characters.

I'm still considering going back to 1E right now... the interesting bit is that the wives/kids that get pulled into my games now "get" the talent tree/spec style system that 4E introduced. I like the concept of the eberron-style "dramatic actions" to use. I like the concept of powers for everyone (poor fighters in 1E)... I even like the care that's been taken into balancing everything this time out.

I just don't like a perfectly good story to be made tedious with an hour-long combat session and micromanagement for dots, bloody, focus, challenge, aoe, movement, opportunity... all that stuff. If I want that, I'll play Warhammer or Axis & Allies or any number of perfectly good wargames.

But for D&D, roll initiative, say what your character does with feeling and get your THAC0 on. You're doing something wrong at my table if you aren't trying to chew scenery or crack everyone up when it's your turn.

Poor attempt at a troll, but I'll bite, Mr. AC.

Chainmail (D&D's spiritual daddy) was a tactical wargame, as is Warhammer.

D&D is a Role Playing Game. You know: tell stories, have adventures.

Tactics are all well and good if that's the kind of game you want to play. It's not the kind of game I want to play, and it's not the kind of game most folks at my table want to play, either.

I want to get through an "episode" per 4ish hour session, not a paragraph of story progress and maybe two encounters.

There's a reason I've been holding onto my huge collection of 1st edition books for all these years -- they work, the rules are flexible, and most people at my table have them more or less memorized. I can put a few figures on a mat, not sweat the finer strategery of combat, and kill a few orcs in 10 minutes with almost zero bookkeeping apart from initiative and hit points.

This keeps the story moving and keeps combat fun.

Might come as a shock to you, but I encourage my players to act. Tunnels & Trolls had it right way back when with their grievous injury chart. Roleplaying is about far more than magical hit point numbers.

I've likely been DMing longer than you've been alive, so I'm just gonna laugh at the rest.

It's a pretty cool proof of concept, but I absolutely shudder at the amount of additional setup time something like this would require for campaigns.

I've run a couple of 4E campaigns after finally letting go of my 1E rules, and not to put too fine a point on things... combat takes way the hell too long when you're forced to deal with miniatures and it just bogs everything down -- don't get me started on the amount of stickers and markers that are required for bookkeeping now.

A couple people at my table like the more strategic combat options that minis offer, but the majority prefer that the story advances more than a paragraph per play session. As the DM, I'm one of them. I'd rather roll initiative and talk through fast-paced combat.

WOTC wants to sell their absolutely hideous plastic minis, and lots of them, so it's in their best interest to make the game mini focused. There are so many rules that depend on movement and proximity that you've basically got to remove the entire combat system and house-rule over it if you forego the minis.

I've seen some folks that use an LCD projector and Photoshop in lieu of a battlemat, but that's still an enormous amount of prep time for a campaign.

I work in advertising.

People hate advertising. They're inundated with it. People in advertising hate advertising (at least on the creative side)... but they recognize that it's a necessary evil, and it's one of the most reliable ways for slacker artist types like myself to get gainful career employment. I have no illusions. I'm helping sell shit to people that they don't want or need.

Usually, I work in business to business stuff, so I don't have to do the soul-searching thing as often as folks who market for consumer brands/retail.

Occasionally people might enjoy a Superbowl spot, or the like, but those are generally narratives, and they account for the tiniest fraction of a percent of all advertising.

I appreciate the craft and thought process that goes into making effective marketing in the same way that I can appreciate move recaps of classic chess games. That doesn't mean I want to experience them in real-time. I want to experience them on my own terms... marketers' responses have been to simply scream louder and louder so that the advertising can't be avoided.

My $12 movie ticket buys me 20 minutes of advertorial (not including previews) if I want to get a decent seat. I get congratulated on my free nano or wii 200x a day if I forget to disable Flash. Same thing on a different scale.

TLDR: Don't think you know too many folks who create advertising... just ones who sell it. There's a difference.

I doubt it. I've had negative reviews published on Newegg, and their reviews are absolutely essential for some of the cheapie parts you can score... for example, making sure a SATA external chassis actually supports 1gb drives, etc (which is often not in the specs).

In fact, I'd go a step further. Newegg leaves up flames and reviews by 'tards who don't know what they're talking about -- as long as you don't post competitive store URLs or prices, and they let manufacturers (or distributors) reply to reviews directly.

I think their system works about as well as Amazon, personally, and I'm generally confident when I buy from there that I know what I'm getting (again, pretty useful with no-name knockoffs).

They're the evil empire. I don't think they'll ever be seen as cool without being split into smaller companies that can develop their own personalities. And no, having the XBox team dabble in UI doesn't really help. Give me back a programs menu that works!

Honestly, the DoJ would have been doing them a favor to split them up like Ma Bell way back when. I'm not sure they'd have been doing the consumer any favors over the long run, though.

From a marketing standpoint, they need their own messaging: not kneejerk responses to Apple and Google. Speak with confidence on their strengths, but set yourself apart from the competition. Speak on your own terms.

It's really marketing 101. A leader in the industry with that kind of marketshare shouldn't even acknowledge the other guys, let alone focus neurotically on Apple who has like 12% market share (on a good day).

When you're that big, you lead -- not follow. It's just so weird to me that they're determined to acknowledge barbarians at the gate at every opportunity.